A former senior FIFA official, Chuck Blazer, claimed he and others took bribes in exchange for supporting World Cup candidate countries in 1998 and 2010, an unsealed paper says. South Africa has denied paying any bribes. French reaction is pending.

The 40-page transcript of a secret court session was
published online on Wednesday, revealing more details surrounding
Blazer’s 2013 guilty plea to charges of corruption, racketeering
and money laundering.

“Among other things, I agreed with other persons in or around
1992 to facilitate the acceptance of a bribe in conjunction with
the selection of the host nation for the 1998 World Cup,”
Blazer told US District Judge Raymond Dearie during a hearing in
New York in November 2013.

“Beginning in or around 2004 and continuing through 2011, I
and others on the FIFA executive committee agreed to accept
bribes in conjunction with the selection of South Africa as the
host nation for the 2010 World Cup.”

The 1998 World Cup was eventually hosted by France and the 2010
Cup by South Africa.

It was also revealed that South African Football Association
president Molefi Oliphant allegedly asked FIFA secretary general
Jerome Valcke in 2008 to withhold $10 million from the 2010 World
Cup budget to find a ‘Diaspora Legacy Programme’ under the
control of then-CONCACAF President Jack Warner.

Reacting to the news, South African Sports Minister Fikile
Mbalula denied that the money was paid as a bribe, stating it was
an “above-board payment” to develop the game in the Caribbean
region.

“We are not in defensive mode...[but] we have a
responsibility to defend the legacy of the World Cup...and our
country’s reputation,” he told journalists.

Blazer was facing up to 20 years in prison before agreeing to
cooperate with the authorities. The cooperation involved the use
of recording devices to aid the investigation. Blazer’s testimony
helped to uncover a corruption scandal within FIFA, eventually
leading to 14 other indictments of officials and businessmen.

The news comes a day after FIFA’s long-time president Sepp
Blatter announced his resignation and called a special congress
to elect a successor just days after he was re-elected.

The timing of the string of revelations on the corruption scandal
– which has been going on for years behind the scenes – has been
questioned by experts in geopolitics. This, and Blatter’s sudden
resignation coincided with the stepped up pressure on FIFA in
relation with the 2018 World Cup bid by Russia and Qatar’s 2022
bid.

Reuters reported Thursday that the FBI is investigating the two
countries’ bids, according to a source in US law enforcement.

“First and foremost, it needs to be understood that this
issue is really not an issue of sports and in fact it’s not
really an issue of corruption: this is a political issue, in fact
a geopolitical issue. That is to say, it’s part of an ongoing
propaganda campaign and, let’s call it, an asymmetrical war that
the United States is waging against Russia in various theaters
from Ukraine to now football and sports, and sanctions, and
economic warfare of various kinds – I think it fits in this
larger context,” Draitser told RT.

According to the analyst, by raising allegations of corruption
around Russia’s World Cup bid, the US government wants “to
justify their narrative that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin
and Russia are the bad guys, that Moscow is the enemy and that
the US is upholding truth, justice and the so-called American
way.”

The reason this narrative is so important for Washington and the
Western hegemony is because “they’ve seen that their
narrative has collapsed in Ukraine, they’ve seen that their
sanctions regime has not worked, it has not crippled the Russian
economy… and so this is essentially a new front in the ongoing
campaign,” Draitser said, adding that he believes it to be
essentially a “campaign against the non-Western world.”